Sylvia O'Brion, 76, sat beside an oil lamp and wood-burning stove in her clapboard cabin on the sub-zero night, strumming her banjo and singing: "This is my home where the bobcats holler and the wild deer roam." She has lived in the primitive dwelling without running water or electricity on the slopes of Dead Fall Mountain her entire life. She shuns modern conveniences. She lives alone in one of the isolated pockets beyond the power lines in West Virginia.

So much for the new, "tougher" Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC, as the agency is known, is in the process of negotiating a settlement with JPMorgan Chase & Co., the huge New York bank that has been accused of serial frauds against California electricity customers and the state's electric distribution system. The reported size of the settlement price could be as high as $500 million, which would be a record penalty in a FERC proceeding. That certainly sounds like a big number.

Nikola Tesla would be proud. In May, Croatia will host its first electric car rally that winds from the northern coast to the capital Zagreb through some of the country's most scenic spots. The route includes a visit to electricity pioneer Tesla's hometown too. The Nikola Tesla EV Rally 2014 starts May 27 and will be divided into five legs that cover some 530 miles. It starts in the coastal town of Pula in the north, heading south to the mountain village Smiljan where Tesla was born, Krka National Park and Zadar on the coast before heading inland and north to the capital Zagreb.

June 21, 2011 | By John M. Glionna and Yuriko Nagano, Los Angeles Times

In a nation where workers are known to spend long hours at the office, many salarymen are facing a rare commodity this summer: free time. These days, 7,400 Tokyo metropolitan government employees arrive at their desks — and go home — an hour earlier than usual. It's part of an ambitious plan by the government to cut energy consumption as Japan faces possible electrical shortages after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that knocked out a major nuclear power plant. The earlier start time means fewer workers at the office during late afternoon, when energy usage peaks.

As supermarkets try to figure out how to cut down on waste and experiment with alternative forms of energy, Kroger Co. says it's doing both simultaneously by turning landfill-bound organic matter into electricity that powers its stores, The Times' Tiffany Hsu reports . An August report from the Natural Resources Defense Council found that 40% of food in the U.S. goes uneaten. When that 20 pounds of food per person per month ends up in landfills, it contributes to 25% of the country's methane emissions.

A man climbed up an electrical tower in North Hollywood on Friday afternoon and started taking off his clothes, police said. He is now nude and several stories up. "So naked guy on electricity pole, that's what it is," said Los Angeles police Officer Christopher No. After getting the call about 4:20 p.m., officers used a loudspeaker to begin trying to persuade the man to come down from the tower, off Denny Avenue and Whitnall Highway....

Customers of Southern California Edison and California's other big investor-owned utilities won't see a refund on their bills from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power -- but they'll be getting $113 million in relief just the same. The DWP was accused by the three big utilities and state agencies of overcharging for electricity during the energy crisis that hit California and other Western states in 2000 and 2001. The L.A. utility, however, wasn't paid, as complaints worked their way through the regulatory and legal process.

The operator of the state's electrical grid asked Californians to conserve energy Monday after a Southern California transmission path reached its peak capacity. The California Independent System Operator issued a transmission emergency, but officials said they didn't expect to have to order rolling blackouts. ISO officials did ask some large electricity users to curtail their electricity use voluntarily.

Edison will soon have a new competitor for electricity in Sierra Madre: City Hall. When private utility markets open to competitors next year, Sierra Madre will be getting into the utility business. The city has registered as an electrical service provider under state deregulation. City officials hope to be able to turn a profit so they can place all local utility lines underground.

A year after the nation's worst blackout, federal regulators issued a scathing review of the electricity industry's voluntary efforts to make their power grids more reliable. Industry audits play down shortcomings of the grid system and rely on ambiguous standards that often are ignored, according to a staff report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The agency cited improvements since the blackout that started Aug.